The Barbed-Wire Kiss (18 page)

Traffic was slow on the Turnpike and the Mustang crawled along, headlights on, wipers thumping frantically, defroster on full blast. The rain was coming down in sheets now, bouncing high off the roadway. A bus returning from Atlantic City, going too fast for the weather, changed lanes in front of him, sprayed water across his windshield.

Past Linden, the low clouds hid the tops of the refinery exhaust stacks, the burn-off flames producing a hell glow that lit the grayness from within. As he got closer to Newark Airport, he saw a pair of disembodied lights in the clouds ahead. They grew brighter and, gradually, an airliner took shape, emerging slow and ghostlike from the overcast.

He got off at Exit 14 and followed the signs to the airport, winding his way through four different cloverleafs before coming out into the terminal area. He drove slowly, watched for the entrance to the long-term parking lots.

Lot D was the first. He steered into the entrance, got his ticket from the machine, and waited for the gate to lift. How many vehicles would be in this lot alone? Ten thousand, twenty thousand?

He took the sheet of legal paper from his jacket pocket and turned down the first row of cars.

Forty-five minutes later, he estimated he had driven past more than a thousand vehicles of one type or another. He had found six Monte Carlos with New Jersey plates and paint jobs dark enough to be worth getting out of the car to take a closer look at.

A half hour after that, he’d found three more. Only one of them was blue, and it had New York plates. This time he didn’t get out.

He reached the end of a row and turned down the next, the beginnings of a sinus headache taking shape behind his eyes. He felt fragmented, off-center, as if he had forgotten something.

Halfway down the row, he spotted a new Dodge minivan, its rear license plate hanging askew. It was held by only one bolt, as if the other had vibrated loose and fallen off.

He braked, looked at the van for a long moment, then swung the Mustang around and headed back the way he’d come.

It took him fifteen minutes to find the Monte Carlo with New York plates again. He pulled the Mustang up behind it, took the already wet collapsible umbrella from the passenger side floor. He got out, popped open the umbrella, the rain thwocking against the stretched vinyl. There, low on the Monte Carlo’s right front fender, was a foot-long scrape where the metal had been pushed in, the paint marred.

He peered through the passenger’s side window. There was trash on the floors, newspapers and empty fast-food bags. There was a faint fishlike smell in the air. Sticking out from beneath the passenger seat was a piece of tan metal that could have been the edge of a license plate.

He walked around the car, the scent stronger now. There was no front plate at all. He went around to look more closely at the rear plate, knelt down, holding the umbrella above him.

The smell seeping from the trunk rocked him back on his heels. He sat down on the wet pavement and backed away, gagging—but not before he saw the looseness of the bolts that held the rear plate, the fresh screwdriver scratches on the metal.

He got to his feet, dropped the umbrella, leaned against the Mustang, and vomited onto the blacktop.

He sat in the back of the Port Authority police car, looking out at the rain, which had slackened to a steady drizzle. From the front passenger seat, Ray swiveled around and held out a pack of Lucky Strikes. Harry shook his head.

“Sorry,” Ray said. “Forgot. Mind if I do?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ll take one of those,” the PA cop behind the wheel said. He was in his late thirties and at least fifty pounds overweight.

Ray and the driver lit up, Ray cracking his window to let the smoke out. The car filled with it anyway, and Harry felt his eyes water. There was no window button in the back.

They were parked near the Monte Carlo, a state police car and another Port Authority cruiser drawn up at angles in front of them. Blue, red, and yellow lights swept the glistening rows of parked cars. One of the uniformed state cops, in a blue rain slicker with a plastic protector over his hat, was kneeling on the front seat of the Monte Carlo, going through the glove box. The other was standing alongside the car, talking to a pair of PA cops. No one seemed very concerned.

“Thanks for coming,” Harry said.

“I would say thanks for calling me,” Ray said, “but I’d be lying.”

“I thought it might make things go smoother if you were here, simplify it a little bit.”

“If this is what I think it is, I don’t see ‘simple’ being an operative word here.” He blew a plume of smoke through the crack in the window.

Another car drew up to their left and parked, a dark green Ford Crown Victoria with state government plates.

“That Wesniak?” Harry said.

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Let’s go.” He popped his door open.

Two men had gotten out of the Ford and were huddling with the other cops. One of the newcomers was tall and young, in uniform, wearing a blue rain slicker with orange lining, no hat. The other was older, with close-cropped steel-gray hair, hands in the pockets of his dark trench coat.

Ray walked over, Harry following.

“Hello, Bernie,” Ray said. “Glad to see you guys here.”

The man in the trench coat turned. He was in his early fifties, shorter than Harry, with sharp blue eyes. He slowly extended his hand.

“Hello, Raymond,” he said. “I heard you were out here.”

They shook. He looked at Harry, nodded.

“How are you, Rane?”

“Lieutenant,” Harry said.

Wesniak looked him over. “Been a long time,” he said.

“It has.”

“You’re the one called this in?”

Harry nodded.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I was looking for a car.” He pointed at the Monte Carlo. “I was trying to find the owner, thought he might have taken a flight out, so I decided to look here first. It was a total fluke that I came across it.”

“Why were you looking?”

“The owner is a man named James Cortez. He’s been missing for close to a month. He works with some friends of mine. People were starting to get worried about him.”

Wesniak frowned. “Anyone report him missing?”

“Not yet.”

“They couldn’t have been too worried, then.”

Harry shrugged.

“So you just decided to look for him on your own?”

“He owed a friend of mine some money. I figured it was worth a shot, drive up here, take a look around.”

“Good guess on your part. You tell all this to the Port Authority officers?”

“Yes.”

Wesniak looked at the Monte Carlo. “Well, we might as well see what we’ve got here. You two know Lou Eagleman?” He gestured at his driver, who nodded. Harry had never seen him before.

“All right, let’s go, Lou.”

Eagleman took a pair of work gloves from the pocket of his slicker. He unlocked the trunk of the Ford, opened it. He pulled on the gloves, rooted around in the trunk and brought out a long metal rod and a mallet. One of the other troopers came over to help. The fat PA cop got out of the car to watch.

Eagleman took a white painter’s mask from the trunk, handed another to the trooper along with a second pair of gloves. They adjusted the masks to cover their mouths and noses, then carried the tools over to the Monte Carlo.

“Rain’s keeping the smell down today,” Wesniak said. “But the way the weather’s been lately, I’m surprised no one called this in sooner.”

The trooper set the pointed tip of the rod against the keyhole of the trunk, held it in place. Eagleman lifted the mallet, gave the flared head of the rod a solid whack. The tip punched through the keyhole and into the mechanism. The trooper twisted the rod, pulled it back out of the hole, and the trunk lid rose slowly. Both of them stepped away.

“Whew,” one of the PA cops said. “That’s ripe.”

The smell wafted out of the gaping trunk like a cloud. Wesniak took out a handkerchief, held it over his nose and mouth, and moved closer to take a look.

“Fifth one this year,” the fat PA cop said.

Harry moved closer to the Monte Carlo, held his breath.

“Let’s get a mobile crime scene lab and a camera down here,” Wesniak said to Eagleman. “I want to get some video before anything gets moved.”

Harry looked over Wesniak’s shoulder. All he could see in the shadows of the trunk were indefinite shapes beneath a green army blanket. He followed the outline of the blanket until he saw something sticking out from beneath one edge. After a moment, he realized he was looking at a pair of swollen, blackened hands, tied together at the wrists.

“Twins,” Eagleman said.

Harry looked at him.

“Twins. There’s two of them in there.”

“Nobody touch anything,” Wesniak said. “All we’re going to do now is wait.”

The fat PA cop snorted, scaled his cigarette away onto the wet blacktop.

“Guess they missed their flight,” he said.

Later, in the close warmth of the port authority office at the main terminal, he drank coffee at a metal table and told his story again, this time to a bored PA lieutenant and a uniformed trooper who took notes on a legal pad. Wesniak stood with his back to the rain-streaked window, watching Harry the entire time.

The PA lieutenant’s name was Doyle. He asked Harry to spell Cortez’s name. Then he turned to Wesniak.

“That’s the name on the registration too.”

Wesniak said to Harry, “Any idea who the other one might be?”

“None. I didn’t even know Cortez that well.”

Wesniak looked at one of the other troopers. “You check them for ID?”

The trooper shook his head. “Lieutenant, they were practically turning to liquid in there. I figured I’d let the ME’s guys do that.”

“What about you, Ray?” Wesniak said. “Any idea what went on here?”

“Not a clue. All I know so far is what Harry told me. But if that’s Cortez in that trunk, it looks like someone got mighty pissed at him.”

A knock sounded at the door and Eagleman came in, shaking rain from his slicker.

“ME’s done,” he said. “They’ve taken the bodies and a wrecker’s on its way. Silverstone took a preliminary look.”

“And?” Wesniak said.

Eagleman caught sight of the coffee maker on the other side of the room, went over and took a Styrofoam cup from the stack.

“Two males,” he said as he poured. “Damn, this stuff is hot. Mid- to late thirties, maybe; he says it’s hard to tell. Caucasian or Hispanic. Both of them tied up, put in the trunk face to face. At least two each in the back of the head. Not much blood around, so Silverstone thinks they were killed somewhere else, then dumped in the trunk and driven here. Looks like typical wiseguy shit. Anybody got any real sugar?”

Doyle opened his pencil drawer, fished out two white packets and tossed them onto the blotter.

“Thanks,” Eagleman said. “I hate this NutraSweet crap.” He shook the packets, ripped them open and poured their contents into his coffee. “Nothing else in the car to indicate what went on. No casings. They’ll fingerprint the whole thing, let the drug dogs take a shot at it.”

“They have wallets?” Doyle asked.

“Yeah, in the trunk. Looks like somebody went through them, then tossed them in with them. No IDs or credit cards. A couple family photos in one, some rubbers in the other. No driver’s licenses. I don’t envy whoever has to print them. They were coming apart like Thanksgiving turkeys.”

Wesniak stood, took his trench coat down from a peg on the wall.

“Harry, I’m sure you know the drill in these cases,” he said. “I’m going to need to talk to you again, soon. You know this Cortez by sight? Well enough to identify him?”

Harry shook his head. “I was mainly just looking for the car.”

Wesniak watched him, pulled on the coat.

“Then I guess there’s nothing we can do until the ME gets through,” he said. “Gentlemen, we’ll talk again.”

Wesniak and Eagleman left the room. Doyle picked up the phone.

“I’ll take you back to your car,” Ray said.

They got up, nodded at the others, went out into the corridor.

“I’m not happy,” Ray said. “But I’m sure you guessed that already.”

They went out the front door into the rain. The green Ford was waiting at the curb, engine running. The passenger window slid down and Wesniak gestured to them.

Harry went over, leaned in the window.

“Being that you are both former law enforcement professionals,” Wesniak said, “I don’t really need to tell you what a piss-poor story that was you gave me in there, do I?”

“What do you mean?” Harry said. He was aware of Ray close behind him.

Wesniak looked out through the windshield.

“Just doing a favor for a friend. Don’t even know the individual you’re looking for. Wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him. If we hadn’t been in mixed company, things would have gone different. You’d be in the back of this car right now. But the last thing I need is some PA cop telling people that an ex-trooper is being questioned in a pair of homicides.”

Harry waited. Wesniak took a business card from his inside jacket pocket, held it through the window.

“I want you to call me tomorrow at that number,” he said. “I’ll be expecting it. Are we understood on that?”

Harry nodded. The window slid up again and the Ford pulled away from the curb.

Harry looked at the card, put it in his jacket pocket.

“Well,” Ray said, “I think we can safely say things have taken a turn for the worse.”

Harry looked at him.

“He won’t let go,” Ray said, “until he figures out where you fit into all this. You know that, don’t you? Right now he’s confused. And so am I. After you get your car, meet me at my office. We need to talk about some things.”

•  •  •

Forty minutes later, they were sitting in Ray’s office, rain blowing against the windows. Ray laced his fingers behind his head, tilted back in his chair.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m listening.”

Harry told him everything. When he got to the part about Cristina, Ray leaned forward on his chair, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped between them.

When Harry was done, Ray sat back. The chair creaked under him.